“I know.” Why had Moreau led him across the property to tell him what the mechanic had already reported?
“He heard no strange sounds.”
“I did. I don’t want to take any chances.”
“When Foulon damaged the steel press, you only told him not to do it again.”
Paul’s gloved fingers tingled around the handle of his attaché case. “You said a belt broke. I took your word for it.”
“You told me not to talk to the men about the work slowdown.”
Paul’s breath came fast and shallow, and he eyed the inscrutable faces of his most seasoned workers. Communists all. Did they plan to turn him in to the German authorities?
He couldn’t overcome them, but he could outrun them, and he firmed his jaw. “What’s this about?”
Dimont passed him a newspaper clipping. A photo showed grinning German troops climbing out of a truck. “That’s an Aubrey. They cut it down to an open truck, converted to a petrol engine, and removed the logo. But it’s an Aubrey.”
The lines of the truck—Paul knew them as well as his own hand, because that hand had drawn those lines. Now that hand clenched and shook. “They can’t do this. It’s in the contract.”
Silvestre tapped his cigarette with his finger, and glowing ashes tumbled to the gravel. “We can’t stop them.”
Paul’s teeth gritted. He’d always known it was possible, but now he knew it for a fact. They had no right. No right at all.
Moreau dragged the toe of his work boot through the gravel, drawing a line. “We can’t stop them from converting our trucks, but we can decrease how many trucks they receive.”
Paul stared at that line in the gravel and tracked Moreau’s line of thought.
“We have ideas,” Silvestre said in his raspy voice. “A plan.”
His gaze snapped up to his stock foreman. “Do you expect me to turn a blind eye while you do what? Commit sabotage?”
Moreau swiped away the line. “We expect you to help.”
“Help?” The cold cut through his overcoat. Was this a trap to get him arrested? Executed?
Dimont nudged Silvestre with a scrawny elbow. “He does not trust us.”
“Why would I?” Paul gestured to the main building. “Four years ago, you occupied my factory. You’re communists,n’est ce pas? The USSR is Germany’s ally, and Moscow has instructed the French communists to cooperate. And you expect me to believe you?”
“That pact.” Moreau spat on the ground. “We are French first, French always, and the boches are bad for France.”
“They plunder our land,” Silvestre said. “They keep our sons as prisoners of war.”
Dimont’s large eyes turned pleading. “We want the Germans to fail, to leave France. Is that not what you want?”
It was.
In those faces he’d often hated, he detected sincerity. Solidarity. A path to do good and resist evil. For some reason he did believe them. He did trust them.
Paul ran his tongue along the back of his teeth. “I refuse to endanger this company or the lives of the workers.”
Silvestre puffed out a cloud of cigarette smoke. “We too prefer to avoid the firing squad.”
“I’m glad we agree.” Words stuck in his throat, but he shoved them out. “What do you propose?”
Moreau held up a stubby finger. “First, slow production.”
“Work slowdowns, machinery repairs.” Dimont pressed a hand to his flat belly. “An epidemic of dysentery.”
